Remnants: A Dragon Age Yarn
by Fortlowe
Summary: Across the Blightlands, a mage of the Circle of Ferelden, now apostate, flees the savage outbreak of blood magic at the Tower with his kidnapped son in tow, a Templar dogging their every step, and the woman he loves haunting his dreams.


_Remnants_

A Dragon Age Yarn

By Fortlowe

Winter raked the Wilds with cold as bitter and as hard as the Maker's condemnation of man. Beyond the overcast marble grey sky, the morning sun was the echo of a memory and the land was Blighted with a ruin that would last some three generations.

Beneath that shrouded sky and upon that cursed earth the Mage ascended from the Fade. He reached over and spread his hand over the Boy's mouth, feeling for the warmth of a few precious breaths.

"Papa," the Boy yawned, waking, "did you see Mama in your dreams?"

"Yes." the Mage said, rising. It wasn't exactly a lie. He had seen her beautiful brown face but the being that bore it, he was sure, was not the Boy's mother. She had perished at Ostagar along with everyone else.

"What did she say?"

"She said that we must hurry and that we would be safe with the Dalish."

"Okay." the Boy said. He trusted the Mage with a faith akin to that one places in one's own heart beating. Maker knew he had come into that blessed faith falsely. The Boy saw in the Mage an invincible hero. A savior. The Mage knew better.

Before Uldred's treachery, all the Boy knew of his parents was that they also resided in the Tower and that they sent him presents on Feast Day and that sometimes he thought he could see them in his dreams.

From the Boy's vantage, an abomination broke through the door of the children's sleeping quarters and was run through then incinerated before it could cross the threshold. Through the cloud of disintegrating ash that had been a nightmare strode a man with a face the Boy remembered from his dreams.

The Mage's recollection of the Boy's rescue was more shameful and more complete. He arrived at the door of the children's quarters before the abomination, and then he retreated into a shadowy corner upon hearing the monster approach. When the beast wearing the husk of one of the Mage's former students ripped down the door, the Mage panicked. He grabbed the long-sword of a fallen Templar. He closed his eyes and charged, yelling. When the Mage felt the blade drive home through the creature, he called upon all the strength that absolute terror could chase out of him to cast a spell and incinerate the monster that was lately an adolescent. He opened his eyes and dropped the sword and ran to his son, knocking down another terrified child in the process. He gathered the Boy up into his arms and held him for the first time in both their lives. Then he turned and with the boy still cradled in his arms he ran from the dormitory, leaving the other children to fend for themselves amongst monsters and madmen.

Three agonizingly cold weeks after slinking out of the Circle and into the existence of a fugitive apostate, the Mage prayed silently to the Maker for protection for the Boy and for forgiveness for himself.

"Gather your things, son. We cannot linger."

"Yes, Papa." They were exhausted and half-starved and right then, the Mage knew, they were hunted. He first sensed the Templar six days prior and each morning the glimmer of that presence grew brighter in his senses. The Templar closed on them when they slept.

They trekked across the barren wasteland all morning. The Mage held a field of warmth around the Boy and endured the cold himself. The Boy at first protested this practice, but the Mage told the Boy that he did not feel the cold and the Boy did not challenge the lie. Though the Horde had long past, the Mage knew there must be stragglers and that he must have a reserve of mana prepared.

"I'm hungry, Papa. Can we stop?"

"Let's keep going a little while longer. We need to find a good place."

"Okay." the Boy sighed, breaking the Mage's heart. Still, the Templar was close enough then that the Mage could tell that she was a woman. The Mage took small comfort in the Templar's pursuit. If a Templar had been dispatched, perhaps the Circle was saved. More likely, he brooded, the Right of Annulment had been called and the Templar quested for its completion.

Early in the evening, the Mage and his ward came upon a clearing and in it they saw an old, abandoned homestead on a hilltop.

"Is that a good place, Papa?"

"Maybe. Let's just wait and look from here."

"I'm so hungry, Papa."

"I know, son. But we can't go up there until we're sure that it's empty. Here. Drink some water." he said, handing the Boy a water skin.

"You drink some too, Papa." It was no use protesting, meager though their provisions were. The Boy would not drink until the Mage did, so they sat in the woods on the edge of the clearing, starving and scared, passing the water skin between them and watched the homestead until late in the evening.

Near nightfall, there had been no traffic and the windows were dark. It was a good sign. Even Darkspawn used fire.

"Let's go have a look before it gets too dark."

"Okay." It was nearly pitch black by the time they made it up the hill. The Mage tried to look inside the house through the windows, but they were opaque from decades of accumulated dust.

"Wait here. I'm going to have a look."

"No, Papa! I'm going with you!"

"It might not be safe, son. I'm just going to have a look."

"Please, Papa! I'm scared!" The Boy whispered on the edge of tears.

"I am too, son. I'll be right inside. It'll be alright." The Mage said, but his protest wilted when the Boy's tiny determined fingers wrapped around the Mage's ring finger.

"Okay."

"Okay."

He was exhausted, but it was no excuse. He knew he should have noticed the strong metallic odor upon opening the door. Should have spared the Boy the sight. But it only dawned on him after he'd struck the torch alight and swept the room.

Hanging from the rafters on hooks were the torsos and limbs of men and women and the tiny bodies of children.

"Oh, Papa!" he sobbed.

"C'mon! We have to go!" the Mage said, picking the Boy up and running outside.

"Shhh. Shhh." He cooed, running towards the woods.

"We're okay." he whispered. "We're okay." The boy squeezed his neck and cried softly into his shoulder.

"You have to eat." The Mage made a kind of nest for them under the trunk of a great fallen tree near a creek. The Boy was still crying. Still at the homestead.

All they had left were some cornmeal cakes and some dried beef and one water skin. It would be the last meal the Mage's hastily gathered supplies would provide. He did not trust the creek water in this Blighted land.

"Please, son. You have to eat." Still weeping, the Boy finally ate and when he was done he said nothing and curled up under his savior's chin and the Mage held him tightly and cursed himself for forcing the child to bear this terrible scar. In the dark, he waited until the Boy's breathing slowed down to the steady pace of sleep and then the Mage slept.

She was there, the Spirit that mocked Her image. They were in the dusty, seldom perused section of the Circle's repository that housed the records of tricks and illusions posing as magic. Even false magics were documented by the Circle's meticulous historian. And it was there, in that torch-lit, isolated, and ignored space that he first met Her, and fell in love with Her, and conceived a son with Her.

"You are not Her."

"No. I am not."

"Then why do you haunt me demon? You must know I will not be tempted."

"I do. Nonetheless, I am no demon."

"You are not Her."

"No. I am not. Even so, I love you. "

"Stop it!"

"I think I am what She left behind."

"No!"

"For you and for the Boy."

"Stop it!"

"She left her Love behind."

"Please!" he begged, falling to his knees. "No more, demon. Please no more." he sobbed.

"Oh, My Love." she whispered. And when she slid her hand over his bald head and curved her finger tips behind his ear then down his jaw then under his chin and raised his head so that his eyes could meet hers he knew what the Spirit said was true.

"My brave, brave darling. Were it possible I would stay here, with you, for all of eternity."

"Yes." He said, defeated.

"No." She said, smiling down sadly. "You have to wake up."

"NO!" He cried, springing up from his knees into Her embrace.

"I love you so much. But you have to wake up."

"I can't! I can't leave you!"

"You must." she said, holding him tightly. "He needs you. Wake up, my darling. Wake up. Please, wake up."

"PLEASE, PAPA! PLEASE, WAKE UP!" and her beautiful woefully smiling face phased into the Boy's heart achingly innocent, horror-stricken visage. Then it was snatched away.

The Genlock tossed the crying child into the creek bed and brought a dagger down on the Mage. The Mage reacted in time to save his heart, but not his shoulder. Pain surged down his arm and back up again, careening into his trunk like a bolt of lightning. The Mage shoved the open hand of his working arm into the the Genlock's face and used his thumb to gouge out its eye. It spat in his face and cursed the Mage in Darkspawn and twisted the knife. Another shock of pain clattered through the Mage's whole person, quickening him with agony and he somehow managed to shove the diminutive monster out from under the tree trunk. Nearly blind with pain, the Mage stumbled out of the man-sized nest after the Genlock. With a hate filled flick of his wrist, the Mage snapped a real lightning bolt from his finger tips that lashed across the monster's chest and stilled its rage for all time.

"Son! Son, where are you?" he yelled, scrambling down to the creek.

"Papa!" he called from above. He had climbed a tree and looked down on his father wide-eyed and amazed. The Boy had seen the whole fight and then, more than ever, was convinced the Mage was proof even against the Archdemon.

"Stay there! Stay right there, okay!" the Mage demanded as he shed his robes and waded waist deep into the creek. He washed off the Darkspawn gore and spittle and nearly fainted when he pulled the jagged blade from his shoulder. He cleaned the wound as best he could and flashed it with a mending spell to stop the bleeding, but he knew it was all for not.

He still sensed the ever present and growing essence of the lady Templar. But another, infinitely darker presence also lingered in his senses. The Corruption had already taken root.

Wretched and starving, the pair had nearly completed their trek across the Blightlands and were less than a day from the Brecilian Forest. Signs of life were emerging and the Mage told the Boy to pick berries for them from a blueberry bush. While the Boy worked to gather their dinner, the Mage sat down and rubbed Elfroot into his shoulder and tried to ignore the murmuring chant that now accompanied his every thought except for those of the Boy and of Her.

The Boy did his work well and returned to his father with more than they could eat. The Mage had nodded off while he was away and the Boy curled up next to him and tried to be strong, but the tears came anyway. The Mage was the Boy's world entire and the Boy knew his father was dying.

As always, She was there. Love no longer appeared to the Mage as the Boy's mother, but instead as a perpetually swirling flourish of flower petals. It was painful for him to see Her face and it hurt her to hurt him and he was already so very frail.

Instead of the dreary repository, Love made a bright and tranquil garden of the Fade and the Mage would walk quietly amongst the Grace. Love was now fully bound to the Mage. She bonded herself to him because the Corruption was too strong for him to fight alone. Even together, they could not win, but they slowed its progress and when the time came, She would not allow the Corruption to have him.

In the Forest, the Mage had to stop to rest ever more frequently and he only rarely spoke. Mostly, he just smiled sadly at the Boy and the Boy smiled back and stood watch when the Mage slept and tried not to cry.

"You must find the Dalish." the Mage whispered from behind cloudy eyes. They had settled by a stream. The water bubbled gently and a warm breeze carried the sweet scent of Andraste's Grace and they both knew the Mage would not carry on from there.

"We'll find them together." The Boy pleaded.

"We will always be with you, Son."

"I'm scared, Papa."

"We will always be with you." The mage repeated and closed his eyes for the last time.

The Boy lay there, weeping, with his head on his father's chest for a day and a night and half a day again and he did not notice the shadow looming over them until an armored glove came to rest on his shoulder.

"Are you here to kill me?"

"No."

"Okay." he said.

"I made an oath that I would find the two of you. That Oath is done." She removed her helmet and the breastplate bearing the seal of the Order and was a Templar no more.

"I'm sorry, child. I knew him. He was a good man."

"Yes."

"Where were the two of you going?"

"To find the Dalish."

"We will bury your father, young one. Then we will go and find the Dalish."

"Okay."

They were some four years wandering the Forest in search of the Dalish. In their travels within the Forest, the Templar taught the Boy the double dagger and the bow for protection and for hunting. When they secretly observed the Boy defending a young Halla from a wolf pack, the Dalish finally made themselves known and allowed the pair to travel with them. In time, the tribe's Keeper perceived and then awakened the Boy to the magic he held within him and trained him in the arcane arts of Elvhen.

When the Boy dreamed, he dreamt of a vast garden brimming with Andraste's Grace and through the Garden a warm and gentle and steady breeze blew and the Boy never doubted himself and when he loved, he loved with his heart entire.


End file.
